Wild Rice Sweet Potato and Corn Chowder
With a delicious blend of sweet and savory, this Wild Rice Sweet Potato and Corn Chowder earned its place as a best recipe of 2017.
Wild Rice Sweet Potato and Corn Chowder
My mother saved me the local paper’s New Year’s edition… including the Best Recipes of 2017! Wasn’t that nice! I guess once a mother, always a mother.
I opened the food section and was immediately drawn to a recipe for Wild Rice Sweet Potato and Corn Chowder. I love a soup that’s seasonal, even in barren winter! With perfect sweet potatoes in our cool dark basement and frozen sweet corn from the winter farmer’s market, seasonal is possible even now!
My husband even helped chop sweet potatoes!
I was even more excited to see the recipe’s author, Terri Milligan, who used to own a restaurant we loved. Although she’s (semi-) retired now, she continues to write and teach. I guess I just need to taste her ideas at home now.
The Wild Rice Sweet Potato and Corn Chowder was as good as we anticipated. The sweet corn and savory bacon perfectly complimented the sweet potatoes. And the flavors took me back to a summer of saving corn cobs for flavorful broth.
A bite of soup
I stayed pretty close to the original recipe, but I did use all bacon grease instead of part butter for the oil. The bacon smelled so good cooking, I just couldn’t toss anything out! Then I used whole veggies in the ingredient list since that’s how I cook. If I cut up a couple sweet potatoes and have some extra, that’s going right into the soup (though I like to see the quantities in parentheses as a reality check). 
My soup leftovers are destined for a second dinner this week and I almost had to do that fork-stab thing to keep my husband from dipping into it for work.
I guess I owe my mother an invite when I serve it again! Thanks Mom!
Wild Rice Sweet Potato and Corn Chowder from above
- 4 slices bacon, cut into ½-inch pieces (or a guestimate of bacon ends)
- Butter or oil if needed
- 2 medium sweet potatoes, cut into ½ inch cubes (about 2 ½ cups)
- 1 small to medium onion, finely diced (about 2/3 cup)
- 1-2 stalks celery, finely diced (about ½ cup)
- 7 cups vegetable broth (or mild broth of your choice)
- 1 ½ cups corn kernels (fresh or frozen, it was about half my 1 lb frozen bag)
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- ⅛ teaspoon pepper
- ½ teaspoon dried rosemary, crumbled or 2 teaspoons fresh rosemary leaves, minced
- 2 cups cooked wild rice
- In a small to medium stockpot, cook diced bacon until crisp. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon and reserve.
- Drain the bacon grease and return 3 tablespoons to pan, adding butter if needed to make 3 tablespoons (I eyeballed it, and just used the quantity of bacon grease in the pan)
- Add sweet potatoes, onion and celery to the stockpot. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring regularly, until onions and celery have softened, about 4 minutes. Add stock and simmer for 15 minutes.
- Add corn, salt, pepper and rosemary. Transfer about 3 cups of the soup to a food processor or blender and process (starting on low) until smooth (always be careful to start blending hot foods slowly to avoid explosions of scalding soup). Stir the puree back into the soup.
- Add wild rice and reserved bacon, then simmer a couple minutes to heat through.
- Serve warm.
- For an economy tip (especially if you don’t keep bacon around), you can buy bacon ends for cooking at about half the cost of bacon.
this sounds like a truly delicious soup, inger! nice find. 🙂
I am truly enjoying my soups this winter (as you seem to be too), Grace!
Ha, my sweet mom saved me the same section because she knows I like to cook! Moms are the best!
Oh too funny Lisa!
Gorgeous soup! Love the colors and will definitely try this.
I’m always happy to get a couple different vegetables in a soup Tammy. Then the color is a bonus!
Inger – I wish wild rice with more available here in the southwest! Yes, we can get it, but it cost a fortune! Your recipe sounds fantastic.
Wild rice isn’t cheap here either David! But I couldn’t resist here 🙂